The Ardent Gourmet
Restaurant Review: LAO ZHANG GUI DONG BEI
Swipe right
June 11, 2018
This is no expat restaurant with a main course of wagyu beef raised on Neptune by monks, at 1000 HKD per gram, gilded with gold leaf, eaten by George Clooney’s guests at his wedding. This is no old chestnut of a restaurant resting on its laurels so long that it can no longer stand up straight, the kind of place you only say you like because you can’t withstand the social pressure to say otherwise and because you’re lonely and the waiters are kind.
You call to make reservations at Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei Restaurant for later that same evening and they tell you that they’re full, maybe you can walk in. You show up half-an-hour before they open, and there’s already a line. All Chinese. In fact, through the entire meal, you’re the only Caucasians in the joint. Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei Restaurant is the real thang. Delicious, intensely flavorful food from North China for the most part, that’s ridiculously inexpensive. If you don’t come here, it’s an act of self-damage, and be it on your own head.
Though the restaurant tilts North Chinese, it has the best Peking Duck you’ve had in Hong Kong, almost as good as the top duck dispensaries in Beijing, at a fraction the cost, a mere 298 HKD for an entire duck. The skin is crisp and perfectly shellaced, most of the subcutaneous fat gone, the meat moist and inconceivably ducky. The shar ping are thin, warm. There are cold slices of cuke and scallion and a bowl of Hoisin. They dispense with the ceremony of a carver in white gloves tableside, but for all the exotic food you’ve eaten in Hong Kong, you’ve never eaten (nor shall you ever eat) a white glove and so this is no loss.
Perfect Peking Duck
There are long-braised, deep-fried, boneless lamb ribs. True, they are a bit greasy and the grease coats your heart valves. In the US, a good valve job with lamb grease costs thousands, requires anesthesia, and is not covered by insurance. So, this is a sweet deal. The meat is crisp and so lamby, not a hint of mutton. There’s a dipping sauce that contains soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, cilantro, chili pepper, perhaps a hint of sesame oil, astringently perfect. You bleat with happiness. Another dish of lamb with cumin might better be called mutton with cumin. Besides the fact that you’re no fan of mutton, it is fatty mutton, and the dish is strangely under-amped with far too little cumin and chili.
Boneless Lamb Ribs
Dipping Sauce for lamb
That classic dish, string beans with minced pork and garlic and chilis, is one jot off: the string beans aren’t blistered. Had the wok glowed smithy red, the dish would have been great, not merely good. If you’re seeking the paradigmatic rendition of this dish, go to Little Chilli in North Point.
Like almost all the Chinese noodles you’ve had in HK, those used in their dish of noodles and pork (with wonderful mandolin-cut radish and cuke) are soft, not at all al-dente. You speculate that this is because semolina flour is not in the mix. Chewy ramen style noodles or excellent Italian style noodles certainly would up this dish. And the sauce, in your view, could use more octane, more garlic, more vinegar, more everything. You like it, but it comes nowhere near making you convulse with pleasure. Were the boneless lamb hacked up and put over the noodles along with its dipping sauce, the dish would howl.
You do convulse over their very cold al dente mung bean noodles, cut like wide fettucine, capped by salty, ravishing meat sauce, strewn with julienned vegs, aromatized by cilantro. It jolts and satisfies like cold hands on your hot back. It’s one of the great dishes you’ve had in Hong Kong this year: hot, cold, crunchy, chewy, vegetal, herbaceous, meaty, saucy, wowza. Despite your marital vows, you’d definitely swipe right for this dish. You’d understand if your wife did so as well. There are certain powers no one can withstand.
Cold Bean Noodles in Meat Sauce
You get up to use the restroom – alas, no soap, no towels -- and see there is a throng outside the restaurant’s entrance waiting to get in. This throng says it all. They’re not panting for mediocre, overpriced food. They’re fly.
You finish with apples with spun sugar which Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei almost nails, but not quite. They bring it to the table with a bowl of cold water into which you dip the apples in order to harden the sugar glaze, but by the time you get to it, the dish has cooled, the glaze hardened, and many of the apples have stuck together. Were they to dip the apples for you either before bringing you the dish or the moment it reached the table, it would have succeeded perfectly. The apples should have been more flavorful. New Zealand Granny Smiths or American Honey Crisps would be perfect. It’s your common lament, but why not make this dish with mango or guava or orange sections or pear (or apple and foie gras)? The chef who finally does this surely will rapture.
Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei punches above weight with Peking Duck that almost rivals world contenders at a fraction of the cost, with cold mung bean noodles as good as love (almost), with lamb to make your heart beat faster (and coat its valves), and a small percentage of dishes that don’t quite work but might another day. Service is friendly and slightly flustered. The interior is pleasant. It’s value for dollar is remarkable.
As you step out the front door of the restaurant, you move past a considerable crowd of locals jonesing for the culinary bliss you’ve just experienced. They know. They know.
It’s stark insane, but your wife insists that the two of you go back to Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei the next evening for another dose of duck. Years ago she chose you and now she’s chosen Lao Zhang Gui Dongebei’s duck. Ah, you’re a lucky boy. You’ll bring champagne. It will be seraphic.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food: 4
Ambiance: 2
Service: 2
Overall Value: 5
LAO ZHANG GUI DONG BEI
Peony House North Block, 55-65A Tai Kok Tsui Rd, Tai Kok Tsui, Hong Kon